I just read this essay by Dan La Botz from 2022 which '[...] examines the ideas of people coming out of the left who call themselves “anti-imperialists,” but who have become defenders of dictatorial governments—some of which call themselves Communist or Socialist—that oppress national minorities, beat down movements for democracy, and crush workers’ struggles for a better life.'
TBH, I think it's useful in understanding the mentality of a lot of the MLs on Lemmy, who tend strongly towards this type of "campism". Definitely worth a read. Extract below:
Many older, former leftists who today are campists adopted this mindset with its origins in Maoist or Third Worldist notions Some of these political analysts and activists today, who still think of themselves as leftists, tend to subordinate all questions to imperialism, arguing that it is the most important and virtually the central issue. If a state opposes the United States, then it is by definition anti-imperialist, so that its government’s own political, economic, and social system is irrelevant to that principal world conflict, which is imperialism. Moreover, whatever the problems of any of the so-called anti-imperialist states, they should not be examined or criticized, because that might weaken support for the anti-imperialist camp and its struggle against the United States and its allies. So, today’s campists will not discuss the authoritarian and oppressive political powers or the exploitative economic systems of what they consider to be the “anti-imperialist nations,” such as Russia, China, or Cuba, or of Iran or Syria. The campists are even more hostile to the notion that one should examine the class character, governmental system, and economic regimes of beleaguered nations like Venezuela or Nicaragua. To question these governments, they argue, is to aid U.S. imperialism. So traditional Marxism, based on analyzing the political economy, social classes, class struggle and oppression in a country, as well as its international relations, is discarded.
These same people generally also tend to define imperialism to mean only U.S. imperialism, ignoring or pushing aside the practices of other imperialist nations and their acts. Since in the eyes of these activists the United States is the only or by far the dominant imperial power everywhere, they then define nations that are opposed to the United States—such as Russia, China, Iran, or Syria—as anti-imperialist nations. And having defined those nations as anti-imperialist, they often then become apologists for the governments of those nations, even though they are authoritarian governments ruling capitalist countries. They will even attribute to these nations “socialist” or “democratic” characteristics that their governments do not in fact have.
The logic is something like this: X is an enemy of the United States, therefore X is anti-imperialist, therefore we support it, and since it is anti-imperialist, it must be progressive. It follows that any criticism of country X is reactionary. People who criticize any anti-imperialist nation such as X must be on the side of imperialism. So, for example, since the United States is an imperial power, and China opposes the United States, then China must be progressive (some will even say socialist). So then, the argument goes, those who criticize China for putting some 1.5 million Uyghurs in concentration camps or for its crushing of the democratic movement in Hong Kong, must be allied with the United States government and are objectively pro-imperialist. This is the campist logic.
